CAT and OXFAM Changemakers

In a one-day collaborative workshop CAT’s own education officer Ann MacGarry worked alongside an educator from OXFAM to deliver a workshop for teachers in Cardiff entitled Exploring the refugee crisis and the movement of people. This was the latest part of theChangemakers project that CAT’s education team have been running with other organisations in Wales over the last few years, funded by the Welsh government.

The CAT contribution this year, in terms of content, was looking at the impact of climate change on migration, this turned out to be a very interesting area of research as it is not at all simple. The pattern is if crops fail or land and homes are flooded, people move to somewhere safe as close to home as possible, hoping to move back. However there are populations on the Pacific islands and in areas where the water sources have dried up permanently or become salty that cannot ever return home. It is also emerging that many of the most vulnerable people simply do not have the resources to move.

There is evidence for a link between a prolonged drought in Syria between 2006 and 2009 (the worst on record) and pressures that led to the uprising but there are many other factors as well, so it certainly does not seem to be the key cause.
Ann explained that she feels that there are three main points that need to be remembered when discussing this subject.

“Firstly, all the evidence suggests the impacts will get worse, secondly the impacts are going to fall mainly on areas without the resources to adapt and thirdly that it is the rich who produce the vast majority of the greenhouse gases, not the poor.”

ChangeMakers is a global citizenship project which gives both students and educators the opportunity to learn and think critically about issues surrounding our global refugee crisis before planning and taking appropriate action to create positive change.

Through her involvement in the project Ann said that she has learnt a lot but that it is worrying that so many of us are ignorant of who is really supporting refugees globally and the huge difficulties faced by the small number of support givers that do make it to these vulnerable communities.

She said that the teachers that were involved in the workshop in Cardiff were aware that they did not know enough but were very receptive and gave enthusiastic feedback on how they would use the resources available. The teachers also really valued the fact that the course was held in Oasis, the Cardiff centre for asylum seekers and refugees. Ann said that,

“It was encouraging that there are teachers out there who are keen to teach about these issues and schools who will enable them to go out for a day to educate themselves on this difficult and complex subject”.